By John Pickard
The Israeli government is taking advantage of the ceasefire in Gaza and the support of arch-Zionist Donald Trump, to increase its repression in the occupied West Bank. For every one released under the ceasefire agreement, the IDF is taking at least one more Palestinian hostage. In the last three weeks, more than sixty have been killed in and around the refugee camp in Jenin.
Although in the past it was virtually unknown for the Israeli airforce to bombard Palestinian areas in the West Bank, it is now commonplace to use aircraft and drones to kill. According to Al Jazeera, there were fourteen air strikes in Jenin in the last few days alone. As usual, the IDF lies to the world, its targets allegedly “terrorists”, but in reality any Palestinian youth who is opposed to the Israeli occupation and not aligned with the corrupt and supine Palestinian Authority.
Even by their own estimates, Israel claims to have arrested more than 200 “wanted individuals”, which in practice can mean anyone. There is no judicial process associated with these arrests and those taken will be held in disgraceful and inhumane conditions in militarised camps. Al Jazeera reports, “The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) reports that at least 380 people have been arrested by Israeli forces since the start of their large-scale military operations in the occupied West Bank after the Gaza ceasefire”.
The PPS further reported that “Israeli occupation authorities continue to escalate their arrests and field interrogations, especially in the northern West Bank governorates, in places like Jenin and its camp, Tulkarem and Tubas.”
There was widespread public sympathy for the alleged medical condition of the three Israelis most recently released by Hamas in Gaza, but little attention in this hypocritical media to the disgracefully emaciated condition of the Palestinians released, several of whom needed to be taken immediately to hospital.
As Israel has been pounding Jenin refugee camp in particular, it is has destroyed scores of homes, some with explosives planted by the IDF, creating another flood of ‘internal refugees’ in the West Bank. Including those who have fled from outlying villages after pogroms by Jewish settlers, there are up to 40,000 West Bank Palestinians internally displaced.
In one of the most recent settler pogroms, Middle East Eye reports that In the early hours of Sunday, “Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the Arab al-Mleihat community, northwest of Jericho in the occupied West Bank”. The fire destroyed everything in the mosque, even the copies of the Qur’an that were in it, and efforts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful.
As is the case in Gaza, it is the deliberate policy of this Israeli government to either take Palestinian land, or to make areas uninhabitable. The IDF is a military force trained and equipped, more than any other army in the world, for ethnic-cleansing, and just as it has done in Gaza, it is using bulldozers to systematically destroy homes, roads, water lines and all aspects of civilian infrastructure.
Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, the UK Labour leadership, heavily influenced by the Labour Friends of Netanyahu, have nothing to say.
With Benjamin Netanyahu, unable to hide his smirk as he sat behind, Donald Trump last week explicitly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. That has been the policy of the far-right Israeli government all along. That is why they will look for any pretext to abandon the current ceasefire in Gaza. But longer term, they want to apply the same policy to the West Bank – to make life so intolerable for Palestinians that they would be happy to leave and go elsewhere.
The big problem for Netanyahu and Trump, however, is the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people and their determination, come what may, to stand their ground and not accede willingly to a new Nakba. The triumphalism of the Israeli state, in combination with the enthusiastic Zionism of the Trump administration is creating a toxic atmosphere in the politics of the Middle East.
Although its affect on other Middle East states has yet to play out, the Trump/Netanyahu axis looks like poisoning the relationships, carefully established and nurtured over many decades, between the US and the Arab world. And it is the Arab masses, watching Al Jazeera on their TVs each night, who are going to make that happen.
[Feature picture is Jenin, from Quds News Network, via Al Jazeera]
